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Packer
Speaks Out
NEW YORK (AQB)--Some quotes from CBS college basketball announcer Billy Packer's during Thursday's conference call with reporters.
"I think that the pairing - the way it's set up - is the one way that Duke can probably get beat. And I think that Michigan State can play them. ... And it's very possible that even if Duke were to beat Michigan State that it will take something out of their team, similar to what it took out of Kentucky [in 1997]." Packer said Kentucky's tough win against the more physical Minnesota team in the semifinals hurt them in the title game, which the Wildcats lost to Arizona, who beat a more finesse team, North Carolina, in the semifinals. "I think if those opponents [Minnesota and North Carolina] had been reversed, then Kentucky would have been the National Champion."
"If somebody is going to do it, they certainly are in position to do well. ... I agree with Jim [Nantz] that Michigan State is in much better shape than the general public is giving them."
"They [Blue Devils] have done everything asked. "We're in a whole new wave of basketball now [driven by freshmen and sophomores, rather than juniors and seniors]. There is probably not a college All-American right now that would have made the first, second or third team had basketball been played the way it was 10 years ago." "All those first, second and third teamers are no longer in the college game. They are in the pro game, unfortunately for basketball. "I think what we're going to see in the future is more top teams like this, and I think Duke will turn out to be one of the top teams of the new wave of college basketball, which is where we are and where we're going to be. "I think [that] of the new wave of basketball, this will be a team to reckoned with 10, 15 years from now. But to go ahead and try to judge a group of freshman and sophomores against what used to be juniors and seniors is, I think, very unfair to both ends of the eras."
"The familiarity he [Ohio State coach Jim O'Brien, a former Big East coach at Boston College] has with how Connecticut plays and what they want to do will help him more than it maybe helps Connecticut because Connecticut has a style of play that they kind of woo against you. And I think Ohio State will have to make adjustments to Connecticut as opposed to the other way around." On the matchup of UConn's defensive whiz, guard Ricky Moore, against Ohio State's offensive star, point guard Scoonie Penn: "It may be the telltale deal as to who wins that game."
"Unfortunately, in legal manners, people sometimes can't see the forest through the trees. ... I think that the message that's going to go out about not having minimums [SAT levels] is going to create damage to intercollegiate athletics well-beyond anything that the judge will have the comprehension to understand. "And that's very unfortunate."
"I think it would just make an awful lot of sense. ... It just makes too much sense for someone not to give it credence.
"I think these pollsters are somewhat of a joke." "I try to tell CBS this, but obviously they're smart enough not to listen to me. But we've got a $1 billion investment here, I think we ought to take $200,000 every year and go do a very sophisticated poll of what's really going on in the United States, in terms of the number of people that watch this event. "[The tournament's] become part of Americana."
"I wanted to see if I could, in effect, sit down and may be - and you would never do this because you wouldn't want to bore the people - give a speech where you would go from 1975 right on through and tell about neat things that happened at each tournament. So I basically played the game with myself while driving in the car one day, and it was amazing the things what came to mind, some of which had nothing to do with the basketball. "I wouldn't want to bore you with going year-to-year, but there have been very few that don't have a neat magic story about them."
"I have never been a professional broadcaster, but I prepare a lot more now than I did in those days because the people watching now are more knowledgable now than they were then."
"You have to have somebody that you respect for his knowledge of what you're doing, and then you have to have somebody that you enjoy spending time with. Jim's not only a personal friend, but he's someone that I have respect for in terms of his professionalism as a sportscaster and his passion and love for the game."
"One of the most nondescript Final Fours of all-time was 1979. ... But everybody now is recreating history because of what Magic and Bird did after that game, not what they did leading up to that game. Going into the Final Four, without question, [Michigan State All-American] Greg Kelser was the outstanding player of the NCAA Tournament. "The Penn-Michigan State [semifinal] may have been one of the worst games, next to maybe the Duke-Vegas championship game, that has ever been played in the NCAA Final Four."
"People always say that television controls the sport. Well, let me tell you something. Wayne Duke was the chairman of that [NCAA selection] committee, and NBC had nothing whatsoever to do with whether the game would be played, or not played or when it would be played. "The decision was made that if word came that President Reagon was out of danger, the game would be played. If they didn't get that, up to a certain time, the game would not be played. It was really interesting to watch how the news departments and the sports departments were totally separate of the committee. "The game obviously eventually went off. It turned out it was played because Reagon made the statement that he was OK, and it turned out from an historical standpoint that he was not OK. "That was the last time I can remember that we were really affected by something of national impact like this [Kosovo]." Photo courtesy of CBS Sportsline. Back
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